Soviet Collapse

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT SOVIET COLLAPSE - PAGE 2

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said he feels "inclined" to run in June's presidential election to counteract the current course of poverty and ruin, according to an interview published Wednesday. Gorbachev has been coy about any political plans, and the statement to the liberal weekly Moscow News was his strongest yet. But it stopped short of a formal announcement. "The logic of events forces me to feel inclined towards a positive answer," Gorbachev told the newspaper when asked whether he would run. "But until an official statement is made, you may consider that a final decision hasn't been made yet."

The Tribune's lucid analysis of U.S. intelligence efforts deserves applause (Editorial, July 8). It was truly a balanced reading of what exists versus what's needed, complete with tips on how to cut bureaucratic waste by combining the duplicated efforts of various competing civilian and military spy entities. Why didn't the GOP Congress think of that instead of trying to eliminate the relatively piddling National Endowment for the Arts and National Public Radio? The savings cited in the editorial offer immensely greater budget-balancing potential, if the motives are indeed fiscal.

President Vladimir Putin wrapped up a thorny debate over Russia's national symbols--and its post-communist identity--by signing a package of laws Tuesday resurrecting the melody of the Soviet anthem as Russia's state anthem. The package was designed to contain something for everyone: It also endorsed the tricolor flag used since the 1991 Soviet collapse and the czarist-era state emblem of a double-headed eagle. Putin has said the combination would mend rifts in a nation still deeply divided about decades of communist rule.

Russian lawmakers on Friday overwhelmingly approved the Soviet anthem as Russia's national hymn -- a move praised by some as a gesture of reconciliation and denounced by others as a symbolic approval of the nation's totalitarian past. The State Duma, or lower house of parliament, voted 381-51 to approve the bill, which was strongly backed by President Vladimir Putin. The move restored the old anthem's music by composer Alexander Alexandrov but not the original text that included praise for Communist leaders Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin.

Three years after the August 1991 coup that led to his downfall, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev says his popularity is surging, making a return to politics possible. "I am now receiving a flood of letters of support," he said in an interview in his office at the Gorbachev Foundation. "They are now starting to remember, `Yes, Gorbachev was right, he was right in saying it's impermissible to destroy the country.' " Political life has been pretty lonely for Gorbachev since pro-Communist hard-liners including the head of the KGB ousted him Aug. 19, 1991.

By Excerpted from an editorial in the Kansas City Star | September 29, 1989

Secretary of State James Baker's response to Democratic criticism of the administration's plodding pace in regard to changes in the Eastern bloc was no response at all. Baker seemed to say that U.S. foreign policy must be in marvelous shape because the president has a high approval rating in the polls. What nonsense! Polls tell of a general feeling because there either is, or is not, relative prosperity, a shooting war or something going on like a big hostage mess. Any real leader will initiate policy.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Margaret Thatcher was "a great politician and an exceptional person" who helped end the Cold War, said Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union. Thatcher, Britain's first woman prime minister, died of a stroke on Monday. "Thatcher was a politician whose word carried great weight," Gorbachev, who sought to reform the Soviet Union and improved its ties with the West but failed to avert the collapse of the nuclear-armed superpower, said on his website.

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain opens a judicial inquiry into the death of Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky on Thursday to establish how he died in the locked bathroom of his vast mansion near London. Berezovsky, who survived years of intrigue, power struggles and assassination attempts in Russia, was found dead on Saturday in his home in Ascot, a town close to Queen Elizabeth's Windsor Castle. Police said there was no sign of a struggle and the 67-year-old's death was "consistent with hanging", suggesting he might have killed himself.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Crimean Tatar leader told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday that the secession of Crimea from Ukraine to join Russia would violate an international treaty in which Russia, Britain and the United States vowed to keep Ukraine intact. Putin spoke by phone with Mustafa Dzhemilev, a senior figure in the Crimean Tatar community, in what may have been an effort to ease their concerns over a referendum on Sunday in which Crimeans will be asked whether they want to join Russia.